The Turkey Trot in Dallas

Don Roberts

That's what I call the Newbery-Caldecott dinner. It was my first. I was invited by some nice people and decided to try it. When some SRRT people found out I was attending they asked me to leaflet the event from the inside on behalf of the need to re-examine earlier award winners, to look at present selection methods (with non-print in mind, for example), and the concern about sexism in children's literature.

People gathered almost an hour early and mobbed the temporary bars set up in the lobby outside the closed doors. The attendees seemed to be about 95% women. Excitement, alcohol and noise took over. I fired down a couple of bourbons in self defense, trying to get into the intensity of the environment. Things got worse.

Suddenly my interior multimedia mind shifted into stereo magnavision (on top of the event) ... I recalled two past events, simultaneously: a trip to a turkey ranch and an Academy Award fiasco at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium. Then I was handed my share of the leaflets and the doors opened.

Wham, the highly excited multitude moved for their tables. Unbelievable. Semi-darkness, numbers on the tables with dim candles, the elevated, flower bedecked speakers' table (about 75 feet long to accommodate all the dignitaries), indistinct everything. Talk, excitement and furtive movement. Kept on truckin'. Found my table, spoke to the people briefly, and then moved out in the room to leaflet as many tables as possible.

People were puzzled and unhappy to be bothered at their fanciest dinner of the year. "Would you please have a look at this information and share it at dinner." "Yes, THANK YOU!" Meanwhile, the waiters were moving in, and the crowd started settling down a bit, getting into food and serious expectation.

The ballroom epitomized the decadence of America. Boggling at the personal investment of hundreds of children's librarians, I started tripping on Thorstein Veblen's Theory of the Leisure Class.

The strange milieu started hushing a bit. The realization of Nobel-Pulitzer-Academy Award fantasy was about to be finalized. Holy cow, stirrings on the elevated platform!

Before we knew it, Sara Fenwick was being kind and understanding about the leaflets..."Let's all be listening." Honey h u s h. And then the golden moments were on. Whew. Luckily Betsy Byers made her acceptance remarks in kind of straight forward this-is-my-craft style.

Not so with little Gail E. Hailey. She cut loose with a ridiculous invective about the hazards of media for kids, etc., etc. SO HEAVY, so misinformed, albeit well intentioned. The rear view mirror audience ate it up with sighs and applause. Just what the doctor ordered for those tired, wheezing veins.

The unreality really got into gear at this point. The assembled swallowed remarks which would make Maurice Sendak and Morton Schindel's hair stand on end. Sipping the last of the coffee and looking at the remains of dessert. Candles flickering and another year's expectation burned out.

I had to split. Luckily there was someone at the table willing to go with me. It seemed like a sacrilege to get out before the benediction. Lurching between and around tables we made it into the vacant, littered lobby ... the abandoned temporary bars sitting there like derelict ships waiting to be towed into port for salvage operations. How many people have seen places like this thirty minutes after the event? (I drove a truck for a decorating company for awhile and saw all the movie sets in their real dimensions.) Wonder when Nader's Raiders will go after the con jobs inherent in convention racketeering?

The fountain across the street provided re-entry. Mist and the water sound were restful. I started trying to imagine the world of children, compare their joy, imagination, intelligence and love to the strange ritual held (presumably for their benefit) in such woebegotten circumstances. Do they have a chance in hell of receiving contemporary library service from people who have indulged themselves in such exotic foibles? Undoubtedly some of them will score behind the otherworldly sentimentality of librarians with the Peter Rabbit past. Good. But what about the rest?